Vancouver’s ‘90s Sound.

Believe it or not, Vancouver had an impressive music scene during the ‘90s.
Some of you will be amazed to read this but Vancouver was a hot bed of talent during the epoch of garage and grunge rock. Our fair city produced an eclectic array of musicians and bands like:

The Matthew Good Band, Econoline Crush, Limblifter, Age of Electric, The Black Halos, Pluto, Gob, Holly McNarland as well as the “The State,” the only good album released by Nickelback, was recorded in Burnaby in 1998.

Unfortunately, the music scene died before many of us could legally attend a live show at the Purple Onion, The Town Pump, Starfish Room or Marine Club.
During the ‘90s, these venues were a Petri dish of musical culture. A small local band could play for only six people a Tuesday night, return for a second show a week later and notice that their crowd had increased significantly.

Before Facebook, MySpace and other online social networking sites, information carried through word of mouth via face-to-face interaction or through a landline telephone. People use to promote bands through bills posted on telephone poles, abandoned buildings, and construction site barriers across the city.

There were no e-vites or fan-sites to tell you when and where a band was playing. The music scene in the ‘90s was based on community as well as a physical representation of support.

What happened to our music scene, you might ask? One could argue that our hive of local talent was killed prematurely through abrupt closures of the live venues that fuelled Vancouver’s music culture.

The city’s liquor licensing regulations choked the life out of these venues in attempts to appease complaining residents and respect their not-in-my-backyard mentality.

All inspiration was pushed aside by Vancouver’s city council implementing by-laws that stifled any musical growth. One such law made it illegal for restaurants to have amplified music and dancing in the same vicinity.

Another factor to the downfall of our music community focuses on the shift in popular music.

Some venues were closing their doors to live music and revamping their name and image to suit the demand of the growing club scene. Hiring a DJ turned out to be a good economic alternative to the struggling local band.

As it turned out, Top 40 music, at the time, was getting young people on the dance floor and, most importantly, spending money at the bar.

For those of you who don’t know or were too young to remember, the years following the collapse of the music scene commonly referred to Vancouver as a no-fun-zone.

Fortunately, we are at an age of enlightenment. There is an impressive wave of local musicians and they are changing the musical climate every day. Vancouver’s new live music venues are becoming well respected around the Lower Mainland and, with a little time, we might be lucky enough have a musical renaissance grace our city.